Less remarked upon is a partially buried clochán, one of the beehive-shaped stone cells the monks constructed, that only came to light during conservation and repair work on the site's north-eastern terrace.

A clochán is a drystone corbelled cell, built without mortar, the courses of stone angled slightly outward and then curved inward until they meet at the top, creating a structure that has shed Atlantic rain for over a thousand years. This particular example survives as an arc of drystone walling, running roughly south-west to north-north-east, measuring around 7.5 metres in circumference, approximately a metre thick and 1.2 metres high. There is evidence of an entrance at the south-western end of the wall. A separate structure lies just 3 metres to the south, suggesting that even in this north-eastern sector of the terrace, the monks arranged their small buildings in close proximity to one another. The find was communicated by E. Bourke, and it forms part of the broader archaeological picture of a community that managed, against considerable odds, to make a home on one of the most inhospitable outcrops in Europe.

What makes this particular fragment quietly compelling is the circumstances of its discovery. It was not excavated as part of a planned research programme but emerged during the practical, ongoing work of keeping the site from falling further into the sea. Conservation work on Skellig Michael has, over the decades, repeatedly turned up evidence that the monastic settlement was larger and more complex than the six famous beehive huts and two oratories that most visitors come to see. This arc of wall, curving across the north-eastern terrace, is a reminder that the full extent of what the monks built there is still, in some measure, being uncovered.